Introductory Seismic Principles

Simon Oakley
Fugro Survey Limited

OSIG Offshore Site Investigation & Geotechnics Committee

Introduction

Modes of propagation
Velocity of propagation
Losses
Effects of an interface
What does a seismic section represent?
Penetration Vs resolution
Signal to noise ratio multichannel seismic
Considerations; bubble pulse, multiple energy
Conclusions

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Preamble: The Fundamentals

Seismic source

Hydrophone detector
Two-way travel time (seconds)

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7
S. Oakley

OSIG Offshore Site Investigation & Geotechnics Committee

Modes of Propagation
Seismic energy travels as a body wave in the offshore environment.

Two types of body waves;

Primary, Compressional,
Pressure, P wave
(The focus of mainstream
industry techniques).

Secondary, Shear, S wave

(Significant in specialist
engineering applications).

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Velocity of Propagation
For a homogenous (isotropic), lossless, elastic medium;

Vp = p-wave velocity
m = shear modulus
k = bulk modulus
r = density
Intuitively, perhaps inclined to think that denser materials would posses
higher p-wave velocity. However, it is the moduli that are the
dominating properties.
Bulk modulus is effectively the measure of incompressibility, so the
more compressible the material, the lower the p-wave velocity.
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Losses Spherical Spreading

As seismic energy travels from the source, there is a decrease in
intensity.
Wave fronts

The total energy remains the

same, but it is spread over a larger
area, so it is the intensity at a given
location that decreases.
Intensity decreases as 1/R2
Source

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Amplitude (pressure) decreases as

1/R from the source.

Losses Intrinsic Attenuation

Real earth materials are not lossless.
There are frictional losses in the conversion of seismic energy to heat.
This loss is frequency dependent, with lower frequencies attenuating
less with distance, thus penetrating further.

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Losses - Scattering
Energy is scattered at sharp changes in velocity structure, e.g. the edge
of a bed or fault, boulders.
Theoretical model of truncated reflector

Energy is radiated in all directions,

thus some is lost.

Two way time

Stack

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Effects of an Interface
Where there is a change in the acoustic impedance of the substrate,
seismic energy is reflected.

Acoustic impedance = density multiplied by velocity

Z=v
Source

Receiver

Z1
interface
Z2

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The reflection coefficient (RC) is the

amount of incoming energy
reflected from an interface.
RC = Z2 Z1
Z2 + Z1
RC is always between -1 and 1.

Effects of an Interface
Large increase (or decreases) in Z create large amplitude reflectors;
11_03a, 6.05

Lake floor

0.00000

0.00000
-0.000

0.01000

0.01000
0.010

Volcanic
bedrock
pinnacle

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What does a seismic section represent?

Seismic source

Hydrophone detector

*
Starting with a seismic source pulse.
Source pulse returns, but is scaled
by the interface reflection coefficients (RC).
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What does a seismic section represent?

At some depth, the signal to

noise ratio becomes too small to
separate a signal (a real
reflector) from ambient noise.

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Penetration Vs Resolution
Solution; make the source more energetic, lower frequency (longer
wavelength).
Problem; Longer wavelengths have lower resolution. Thus, reducing
ability to distinguish two separate features.
Vertical resolution is generally
accepted as being the quarter
wavelength, /4. Referred
to as the Limit of Separability

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Horizontal Resolution
Defined as the Fresnel Zone, where reflected energy adds constructively
over half the wavelength.
Like vertical resolution, it is
dependant upon frequency. The higher
the frequency, the smaller the Fresnel
Zone.
A simple calculation of horizontal
resolution is /2.

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Signal to Noise Ratio - Multichannel Seismic

Single channel systems use just one hydrophone receiver. No matter
how powerful the seismic source, losses limit the penetration depth.
Multichannel seismic data significantly improves the signal to noise ratio,
as seismic traces can be stacked on the basis of CMP.
Multi-channel streamer

Source

CMP

S. Oakley

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Multichannel Seismic
By careful survey design, seismic
energy reflects off the same
(common) mid points.
However, due to the nature of the
acquisition geometry, the CMP
shot reflections will not align in
time.
In order to stack the traces, the
reflections need to be aligned in
time; called Normal Moveout
(NMO) correction.

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Multichannel Seismic
Placing all of the stacked CMP gathers in order of location forms a
seismic section*;

* There are numerous further processing steps to produce high quality

seismic data sets; trace editing, filtering, static corrections, velocity
analysis, muting, migration, de-multiple, zero phasing.
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Considerations Bubble Pulse

Air guns are the industry standard for seismic sources.
They produce a sudden discharge of compressed air (a bubble) into the
water column, resulting in a short, high energy seismic pulse.
However, they have one significant issue; the bubble pulse.

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Considerations Bubble Pulse

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Considerations Bubble Pulse

To minimise the effect of the bubble pulse, an array of air guns is
commonly used.
The array consists of different sized air guns which have different bubble
responses.
These responses will interfere and ideally cancel each other out.
Single air gun

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Air gun array

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Considerations Multiple Energy

Seismic energy reflects more than once of interfaces. These reflections
are known as multiples.

Need to be aware of these as they effect data quality and the ability to
interpret the data.
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Considerations Multiple Energy

Shot point no.

TWT (ms)

TWT (ms)

Difficult to interpret real

lithology from multiples.

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Ideally, multiple energy can

be removed by seismic
processing techniques.

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Conclusions

Two types of body wave compressional and shear.

Velocity primarily controlled by moduli.
Losses; spreading, absorption & scattering.
Acoustic impedance defined as product of velocity and density.
Acoustic impedance contrast across an interface defines reflection
coefficient (reflection strength).
A reflector returns the source pulse, scaled by the reflection coefficient.
A seismic trace is primarily comprised of such occurrences.
To image deeper, need better SNR, achieved by multichannel stacking
techniques.
Compromise between penetration and resolution.
Considerations bubble pulse, multiple energy.
As with all geophysical techniques, data have to be interpreted to yield a
geological model and then a geotechnical model.
Strength lies in volume coverage and yielding a perspective on spacial
heterogeneity of the sub-surface.

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